Chapter 7 7. Kew Gardens [Kew Gardens]

There are hundreds of flower stalks planted in the egg-shaped flower bed, and the branches are covered with clusters of green leaves from the middle of the waist, some are heart-shaped and tongue-shaped; clusters of petals emerge from the tips, red, blue, and yellow. , There are spots on the petals, colorful and very conspicuous.No matter it is red, blue or yellow, there is always a straight style protruding from the shadowy chassis, with a thick head and a thin body, covered with a layer of gold dust.The petals are wide open, so they can be slightly tilted by the summer breeze; when the petals move, the red, blue, and yellow lights will intersect and spread, and every inch of the brown soil underneath will be stained with watery spots. Variegated spots.The light either falls on the top of the smooth gray-white pebbles, or falls on the brown spiral pattern of the snail shell, or shines on a drop of rain, turning into thin walls of water, red, blue, yellow. Yes, the color is so thick that people worry that it will burst and blow up to nothing.However, it did not burst, and the raindrops returned to their original silver-gray color as soon as the light passed.The light moved onto a leaf, revealing the veins of the twigs beneath the leaf's skin.The bright light continued to move forward, and shot under the densely layered heart-shaped leaves and tongue-shaped leaves like a canopy, emitting light in that large green shadow.At this time, the wind from the heights was a little bit stronger, so the colorful lights turned to reflect into the vast space on the top, and caught the eyes of the men and women who came to Kew Gardens on this July day.

The figures of these men and women passed by in twos and threes beside the flower bed. They walked in an unconventional and strangely casual manner. It seemed that they were not dissimilar to the blue and white butterflies flying around on the lawn and wandering around the altar.A man came and walked in front of the woman, about half a foot apart. The man wandered casually, while the woman was more attentive, but she often turned her head, being careful not to let the children fall too far.The man intentionally wanted to walk ahead of the woman like this, but I'm afraid he didn't have any intentions. He just wanted to walk and think about his own thoughts.

"I came here with Lily fifteen years ago," he thought. "We were sitting by a small lake over there, and it was really hot that day. I proposed to her for a whole afternoon. At that time, there was a dragonfly flying around us all the time. I still remember the appearance of this dragonfly Clearly, I still remember the square silver buckle on the toe of her shoes. I was talking, but my eyes could see her shoes. As long as I saw her shoes moving impatiently, I didn’t even use my head Lift it up, and you will know what she is going to say. Her whole mind seems to be concentrated on that shoe. As for me, I put my love and my wish on the dragonfly. I don't know how Suddenly, on a whim, I decided that if the dragonfly stopped, on the leaf over there, on the broad leaf next to the big red flower, then she would agree to my marriage right away. But the dragonfly turned around and around , and refused to stop anywhere—don’t stop, yes, don’t stop, otherwise I wouldn’t be walking here with Eleanor and the child today. I said, Eleanor, do you think about the past? ?”

"Why are you asking that, Simon?" "Because I'm just thinking about the past. I'm thinking about Lily, the one who flirted with me at the beginning....Hey, why don't you talk? I think about the past, are you unhappy?" "Why should I be unhappy, Simon? How many ancestors have been buried under the big tree in this garden, can they forget the past when they come here? Those ancestors who have been buried under the big tree, those undead souls, they don't Doesn’t it represent our past? Isn’t our past just such a small trace?… Isn’t our happiness given by them? Isn’t our reality today come from them?”

"But what I think of is a square silver buckle on the toe and a dragonfly..." "What I think of is a soft kiss. Twenty years ago, six little girls sat at the easel by a small lake over there and painted water lilies. That was the first time in my life I saw water lilies with red flowers. Suddenly, I received a light kiss on my neck. My hands trembled all afternoon, and I couldn’t even draw. I took out my watch and looked at the time. I limited myself to only remember this kiss for five minutes —this kiss is too precious. I was kissed by a half-white old lady with a wart on her nose, and that's the first time in my life I've really learned how to kiss. Come, Caroline Come on, Hubert."

So the four of them walked side by side through the flower bed, and in a short while there were only four small figures left among the big trees. The sun and shade swayed on their backs, casting large, swaying, mottled shadows. In the egg-shaped flower bed, the red, blue, and yellow lights stayed on the snail shell for two or three minutes just now. At this moment, the snail seemed to move slightly in the shell, and then struggled to loosen the broken pieces. Climbing up on the mud, along the way, the loose soil turned up one after another and fell down in pieces.The snail seemed to have a definite destination in mind, but in this respect it was different from the thin-waisted, slender-legged, weird-looking caterpillar in front of it. The caterpillar raised its legs high, and at first planned to cross from the snail. Passed through, but then shook the tentacles and hesitated for a while, as if thinking about it, before going back to the opposite direction with the same fast and weird steps as before.The brown cliff faces the gully, and there is a lake with deep green water in the gully. The flat trees are like sharp swords, swinging from root to tip, gray-white round boulders stand in the way, and there are thin and crisp pieces, Big and wrinkled, stuck in the ground—this snail is going to its destination, and there are so many obstacles lying between the flower stalks along the way.The snail came to a dead leaf like a yurt, and before it could decide whether to go around or go straight, there were already shadows shaking in front of the flower bed, and someone was coming.

This time, both of them are men.The young one's expression was so calm that it seemed a little abnormal.When the other fellow in the company spoke, he would raise his eyes and stare straight ahead. As soon as the other fellow in the company finished speaking, he would stare at the ground again, and sometimes it took a long time before he spoke. , and sometimes simply keep silent.The other one was older, walked with one foot higher than the other, and swayed violently. His appearance of shaking his hands forward and raising his head abruptly was very similar to that of an impatient cart horse. He got impatient waiting in front of the door, but to him, his actions didn't have any intention or meaning.He talked almost continuously, and when the other party didn't answer, he could smile amusedly and go on talking again, as if the smile meant that the other party had answered.He was talking about souls—the souls of the dead.According to him, the souls of the dead have been telling him their experiences in heaven, all kinds of strange things, and everything.

"The Kingdom of Heaven, the ancients believed it to be Thessaly, William. Now when wars happen, spirits often haunt the mountains there, and the sound of the places they pass is like thunder." He paused here, as if he was listening , then smiled slightly, raised his head suddenly, and continued: "All you need is a small battery, and a piece of tape to wrap the wires to prevent leakage...Is it leakage? ...In short, put this small mechanism on the bedside, and put it wherever it is convenient, for example, it can be placed on a clean mahogany small table. If a woman loses her husband, just ask the craftsman to put it all together Assemble everything according to my instructions, and then listen attentively. As soon as the agreed signal is issued, the undead can be summoned immediately. But only women can do that? Choose a woman whose husband has died? Choose a woman who has not yet taken off her filial piety? Choose ..."

As soon as he said this, he seemed to see a woman's clothes in the distance, which looked faintly purple-black in the shadows.He immediately took off his hat, put one hand on his heart, murmured words, made all kinds of crazy gestures, and hurried towards her.But William seized him by the sleeve, and, to attract the old man's attention, he tapped a flower with his cane.The old man seemed a little confused for a while, he looked at the flower for a while, and listened with his ears, as if he heard a voice in the flower talking, so he agreed.Then he talked about the forests of Uruguay, where he had been there hundreds of years ago with one of the most beautiful ladies in Europe.He babbled about the waxy petals of tropical wildflowers in the forests of Uruguay, about nightingales, beaches, mermaids, and drowned women in the sea.As he spoke, he was involuntarily pushed forward by William, and the indifferent expression on William's face gradually became more and more severe.

Followed by two older women, because they were quite close to the old man, they were a little puzzled when they saw the old man's behavior.These two women belonged to the lower middle class, one was very fat and very heavy, the other had rosy cheeks and was quite agile.People of their status and status often have such a characteristic, that is, when they see someone—especially a rich person—behaving strangely, maybe their brains are not normal, then their energy will immediately rise.It's a pity that this time the old man was not close enough after all to be sure whether the man was just acting eccentrically or really crazy.They stared at the old man's back silently for a while, secretly exchanged a strange look, and then continued talking enthusiastically, and the mixed conversation was really hard to understand:

"Nell, Bert, Rot, Seth, Phil, Daddy, he said, I said, she said, I said, I said..." "My Bert, sister, Bill, grandfather, the old man, sugar, sugar, flour, salmon, vegetables, sugar, sugar, sugar." At the same time as this big talk came like raindrops, the fat woman saw these flowers standing upright indifferently but firmly in the mud, and stared at them with a curious expression.It looked like a person who woke up from a deep sleep and saw that the reflection of the brass candlestick was a little strange, so he closed his eyes and opened it again. What he saw was the brass candlestick. He stared intently at the candlestick.So the big woman just stood still facing the egg-shaped flower bed. She had pretended to be listening to the other party, but now she didn't even pretend at all.She let the other party's words call her like raindrops, she just stood there, leaning forward and backward gently, admiring her flowers wholeheartedly.I had enough rewards, so I proposed, let's find a seat and drink some tea. At this time, the snail has completely thought about it: what other ways can it reach its destination without taking a detour or climbing on dead leaves?Not to mention that it takes so much effort to climb up the dead leaves, just look at this thin thing, just touch it with the pointed end of the tentacles, and it swayed for a long time. It is really a question of its own weight; so the snail finally decided to climb down, because there is a raised place on the dead leaf, which is higher than the ground, and the snail can get in completely.The snail had just stuck its head into the gap and was looking at the high brown-red ceiling. It hadn't quite gotten used to the brown-red and cold light there, when two more people came over on the outside lawn.This time both were young men, a man and a woman.Both were in their prime of youth, perhaps even younger, as the pink buds are still budding, and the butterflies with wings are not yet ready to fly in the sun. "Fortunately, it's not Friday," the man said. "What? You also believe in luck?" "It will cost sixpence to come on Friday." "What is sixpence? Isn't that worth sixpence?" "What is 'that'—what does the word 'that' mean?" "Ah, just tell me...what I mean...don't you understand what I mean?" In these few sentences of dialogue, there is always a long pause after each sentence is finished, and the tone is very flat and monotonous.The couple stood quietly on the edge of the flower bed, pressing her parasol together, pressing and pressing, pressing the tip of the umbrella deeply into the soft soil.He put his hand on hers, and together they pressed the tip of the parasol into the mud in an unusual gesture of affection.In fact, their few short and insignificant words also have profound meanings, but the meaning is deep and affectionate. The wings of the words are too short to carry such a big weight, and they can't fly far even if they barely take off. The topic fell to the ground in embarrassment, but their immature hearts already felt the weight of the words.While pressing the tip of the parasol into the soil, they thought to themselves: Who can say that there is not a deep cliff hidden in these words?Who can say for sure that under the beautiful sun, the slope behind is not a world of ice and snow?Who knows?Who has experienced this kind of thing?She just said casually, wondering if the tea in Kew Garden is good or not. He immediately felt like a shadow loomed up behind the words, as if there was something huge and solid standing there.After all, the mist slowly dissipated, and something seemed to appear in front of my eyes... Oh my god, what is that? ...the little white table, and the waitress, looking first at her, then at him.It's not a lie that you get two shillings when you pay the bill.He touched the two shilling coin in his pocket and comforted himself secretly: it was not a dream, definitely not a dream.Everyone thought this kind of thing was not surprising at first, except for him and her, but now even he felt that this seemed not a wrong idea, and... thinking of this, he was so excited that he couldn't stand, and he didn't even think about it. Thinking about it, he suddenly pulled out the tip of the parasol, impatiently looking for a place to drink tea, and drink tea like others. "Come on, Trish, it's time for our tea." "Where is this place to drink tea?" She said in an indescribably excited tone, looked around in bewilderment, and let him lead her away, dragging the parasol behind her back, and walked along the path on the lawn.She turned her head here and there, wanting to go here and there, and she didn't care about drinking tea. She just remembered that there were orchid cranes among the wild flowers, where there was a Chinese-style pagoda, and where there was another Red-crowned bird.But she finally followed him. Just like that, one by one, one by one, passed by the flower bed continuously, almost always walking in such an unconventional manner, and their feet were not accurate.Layer after layer of turquoise mist gradually enveloped them. At first their shapes and colors were clearly visible, but then the shapes and colors were all dissolved in the turquoise atmosphere.The weather is too hot? It’s so hot that even crows would rather hide in the shade of flowers. It takes a long time to jump around. Even when they jump up, they are rigid, like an automatic toy.The white butterflies no longer fly around and roam freely, but hover up and down in twos and threes, like pieces of white flowers scattered, floating on the top of the highest layer of flowers, outlining a silhouette, like half a decadent marble column .The glass-topped greenhouse with palms is shining brightly, as if a huge open-air market has been opened under the sun, full of shiny green umbrellas.The hum of the plane is the summer sky murmuring its intense feelings.Far away in the sky, many colorful figures appeared for a while, some were yellow and some were black, some were pink and some were white, it was obvious that there were men, women and children, but they saw a golden figure on the grass. The large pieces were immediately shaken, and they all hid in the shade of the trees one after another, blending into this golden and green world like water droplets, leaving only a few faint red and blue traces.It seemed that all the huge creatures had been suffocated by the heat, curled up in a ball, and lay still, but their mouths still made trembling sounds, like a thick candle spitting flames.sound.Yes, it is sound.It was a wordless voice, filled with such hearty pleasure and burning desire, and the child's voice contained such childish surprise, breaking the silence all at once.Break the silence?Where does the silence come from here?The wheels of the bus are constantly spinning, and the gears are constantly changing.The buzzing sound of the city is like a large series of boxes ①, all made of cast steel, one box within another, and the boxes are constantly turning there.But that silent voice was so loud that it overwhelmed the noise of the city, and the colorful petals also shot their brilliance into the vast sky. comfortable translation 7. Kew Gardens From the oval–shaped flower–bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart–shaped or tongue–shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of color raised upon the surface; the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the smooth, gray back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second silver gray once more, and the light Now settled upon the flesh of a leaf, reveal ing the branching thread of fiber beneath the surface, and again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green spaces beneath the dome of the heart–shaped and tongue–shaped leaves. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the color was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July. The figures of these men and women straggled past the flower–bed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zig–zag flights from bed to bed. The man was about six inches in front of the woman, strolling carelessly, while she bore on with greater purpose, only turning her head now and then to see that the children were not too far behind. The man kept this distance in front of the woman purposely, though perhaps unconsciously, for he wished to go on with his thoughts. “Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily,” he thought. “We sat somewhere over there by a lake and I begged her to marry me all through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circular round us: how clearly I see the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly; for some reason I thought that if it settled there, on that leaf, the broad one with the red flower in the middle of it, if the dragonfly settled on the leaf she would say " Yes” at once. But the dragonfly went round and round: it never settled anywhere—of course not, happily not, or I shouldn't be walking here with Eleanor and the children—Tell me, Eleanor. D'you ever think of the past?" "Why do you ask, Simon?" "Because I've been thinking of the past. I've been thinking of Lily, the woman I might have married. . . Well, why are you silent? Do you mind my thinking of the past?" "Why should I mind, Simon? Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees. . . one's happiness, one's reality?" "For me, a square silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly—" “For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls sitting before their easels twenty years ago, down by the side of a lake, painting the water–lilies, the first red water–lilies I'd ever seen. And suddenly a kiss, there on the back of my neck. And my hand shook all the afternoon so that I couldn't paint. I took out my watch and marked the hour when I would allow myself to think of the kiss for five minutes only—it was so precious—the kiss of an old grey–haired woman with a wart on her nose, the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come, Hubert.” They walked on the past the flower–bed, now walking four abreast, and soon diminished in size among the trees and looked half transparent as the sunlight and shade swam over their backs in large trembling irregular patches. In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shelled had been stained red, blue, and yellow for the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be moving very slightly in its shell, and next began to labor over the crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down as it passed over them. It appeared to have a definite goal in front of it, differing in this respect from the singular high stepping angular green insect who attempted to cross in front of it, and waited for a second with its antenna trembling as if in deliberation, and then stepped off as rapidly and strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade–like trees that waved from root to tip, round boulders of gray stone , vast crumpled surfaces of a thin crackling texture—all these objects lay across the snail's progress between one stalk and another to his goal. Before he had decided whether to circumvent the arched tent of a dead leaf or to breast it there came past the bed t he feet of other human beings. This time they were both men. The younger of the two wore an expression of perhaps unnatural calm; he raised his eyes and fixed them very steadily in front of him while his companion spoke, and directly his companion had done speaking he looked on the ground again and sometimes opened his lips only after a long pause and sometimes did not open them at all. The elder man had a curiously uneven and shaky method of walking, jerking his hand forward and throwing up his head abruptly, rather in the manner of an impatient carriage horse tired of waiting outside a house; but in the man these gestures were irresolute and pointless. He talked almost incessantly; he smiled to himself and again began to talk, as if the smile had been an answer. —the spirits of the dead, who, according to him, were even now telling him all sorts of odd things about their experiences in Heaven. “Heaven was known to the ancients as Thessaly, William, and now, with this war, the spirit matter is rolling between the hills like thunder.” He paused, seemed to listen, smiled, jerked his head and continued:— "You have a small electric battery and a piece of rubber to insulate the wire—isolate?—insulate?—well, we'll skip the details, no good going into details that wouldn't be understood—and in short the little machine stands in any convenient position by the head of the bed, we will say, on a neat mahogany stand. All arrangements being properly fixed by workmen under my direction, the widow applies her ear and summons the spirit by sign as agreed. Women! ! Women in black—” Here he seemed to have caught sight of a woman's dress in the distance, which in the shade looked a purple black. He took off his hat, placed his hand upon his heart, and hurried towards her muttering and gesticulating feverishly. But William caught him by the sleeve and touched a flower with the tip of his walking–stick in order to divert the old man's attention. After looking at it for a moment in some confusion the old man bent his ear to it and seemed to answer a voice speaking from it, for he began talking about the forests of Uruguay which he had visited hundreds of years ago in company with the most beautiful young woman in Europe. He could be heard murmuring about forests of Uruguay blanketed with the wax petals of tropical roses, nightingales, sea ​​beaches, mermaids, and women drowned at sea, as he suffered himself to be moved on by William, upon whose face the look of stoical patience grew slowly deeper and deeper. Following his steps so closely as to be slightly puzzled by his gestures came two elderly women of the lower middle class, one stout and ponderous, the other rosy cheeked and nimble. Like most people of their station they were frankly fascinated by any signs of eccentricity betokening a disordered brain, especially in the well–to–do; but they were too far off to be certain whether the gestures were merely eccentric or genuinely mad. After they had scrutinised the old man's back in silence for a moment and given each other a queer, sly look, they went on energetically piecing together their very complicated dialogue: “Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I says, she says, I says, I says, I says—” “My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man, sugar, Sugar, flour, kippers, greens, Sugar, sugar, sugar.” The ponderous woman looked through the pattern of falling words at the flowers standing cool, firm, and upright in the earth, with a curious expression. She saw them as a sleeper waking from a heavy sleep sees a brass candlestick reflecting the light in an unfamiliar way, and closes his eyes and opens them, and seeing the brass candlestick again, finally starts broad awake and stars at the candlestick with all his powers. So the heavy woman came to a standstill opposite the oval–shaped flower bed, and ceased even to pretend to listen to what the other woman was saying. She stood there letting the words fall over her, swaying the top part of her body slowly backwards and forwards, looking at the flowers. Then she suggested that they should find a seat and have their tea. The snail had now considered every possible method of reaching his goal without going round the dead leaf or climbing over it. Let alone the effort needed for climbing a leaf, he was doubtful whether the thin texture which vibrated with such an alarming even crackle when to by the tip of his horns would bear his weight; and this determined him finally to creep beneath it, for there was a point where the leaf curved high enough from the ground to admit him. He had just inserted his head in the opening and was taking stock of the high brown roof and was getting used to the cool brown light when two other people came past outside on the turf. This time they were both young, a young man and a young woman. They were both in the prime of youth , or even in that season which precedes the prime of youth, the season before the smooth pink folds of the flower have burst their gummy case, when the wings of the butterfly, though fully grown, are motionless in the sun. “Lucky it isn’t Friday,” he observed. "Why? D'you believe in luck?" “They make you pay sixpence on Friday.” "What's sixpence anyway? Isn't it worth sixpence?" "What's 'it'—what do you mean by 'it'?" "O, anything—I mean—you know what I mean." Long pauses came between each of these remarks; they were uttered in toneless and monotonous voices. The couple stood still on the edge of the flower bed, and together pressed the end of her parasol deep down into the soft earth. that his hand rested on the top of hers expressed their feelings in a strange way, as these short insignificant words also expressed something, words with short wings for their heavy body of meaning, inadequate to carry them far and thus aware awkwardly upon the very common objects that surrounded them, and were to their inexperienced touch so massive; but who knows (so they thought as they pressed the parasol into the earth) what prescriptions aren't concealed in them, or what slopes of ice don't shine in the sun on the other side? Who knows? Who has ever seen this before? Even when she wondered what sort of tea they gave you at Kew, he felt that something loomed up behind her words, and stood vast and solid behind them; mist very slowly rose and uncovered—O, Heavens, what were those shapes?—little white tables, and waitresses who looked first at her and then at him; and there was a bill that he would pay with a real two shilling piece, and it was real, all real, he assured himself, fingering the coin in his pocket, real to everyone except to him and to her; even to him it began to seem real; and then—but it was too exciting to stand and think any longer , and he pulled the parasol out of the earth with a jerk and was impatient to find the place where one had tea with other people, like other people. "Come along, Trissie; it's time we had our tea." “Where does one have one's tea?” she asked with the oddest thrill of excitement in her voice, looking vaguely round and letting herself be drawn on down the grass path, trailing her parasol, turning her head this way and that way, forgetting her tea, wishing to go down there and then down there, remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers, a Chinese pagoda and a crimson crested bird; but he bore her on. Thus one couple after another with much the same irregular and aimless movement passed the flower–bed and were enveloped in layer after layer of green blue vapor, in which at first their bodies had substance and a dash of colour, but later both substance and colour. dissolved in the green–blue atmosphere. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush chose to hop, like a mechanical bird, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next; white butterflies danced one above another, making with their white shifting flakes the outline of a shattered marble column above the tallest flowers the glass roofs of the palm house shone as if a whole market full of shiny green umbrellas had opened in the sun; and in the drone of the aeroplane the voice of the summer sky murmured its fierce soul. Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and the n, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they waved and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly with red and blue. It seemed as if all gross and heavy bodies had sunk down in the heat motionless and lay huddled upon the ground, but their voices went wavering from them as if they were flames lolling from the thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire, or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise; breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; vast nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colors into the air.